Greenhill Partners with Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum

or censored in any way, which I think is incredibly important,” Smith said.

On Feb. 7, the voice of Nobel Peace Prize nominee and “grandmother of Juneteenth” Opal Lee echoed through the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum. Through her talk, Lee left a deep impact on Greenhill students and faculty.

“I had read a lot about her prior to getting to go see her, and she truly is an inspiration,” said Upper School History Department Chair Amy Bresie ’96. “It was just an incredibly powerful evening that I’m certainly taking with me.”

Lee’s talk was made possible by Greenhill’s recent partnership with the museum, which became official in January this year.

“I would go to these programs, and I’d just think that this museum is doing some really important work in the city,” said Associate Head of School for Mission, Community, and Culture Tom Perryman. “I’m proud to be a resident of Dallas and have this museum.”

Greenhill’s partnership with the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum was spearheaded by Perryman, whose involvement with the institution began long before the partnership became official.

“I’m a member,” Perryman said. “I first started going down there in its old location 15 years ago. I know the director of the museum, Mary Pat Higgins, who is a superstar.”

Aware of other community partnerships, Perryman was determined for Greenhill to be among them.

“I would go and sit in these amazing programs and see the names of sponsoring organizations,” Perryman said. “I’m like, ‘we ought to be up there. This is what we do. This is who we are.’”

Due to his personal involvement with the museum and Greenhill’s field trips there, he says that establishing the partnership was a relatively simple process.

“We’ve been taking Middle Schoolers down there for a long time before it even moved into the new building, so we already had a connection with the museum and their curriculum,” Perryman said. “I talked to [Head of School Lee Hark]. I talked to the division heads, and everybody said this makes all the sense in the world.”

Another reason Perryman felt drawn to the idea of a partnership was because of the museum’s mission statement, which closely aligned with Greenhill’s goal to teach and combat injustice.

“Our vision statement part three is ‘we see the world made more hopeful because of the Greenhill community,’ and that’s exactly what the museum is trying to do,” said Perryman.

Bresie agrees with this idea, adding that a critical part of fulfilling Greenhill’s mission statement is extending our services to the broader community.

“With a mission statement like that, you can’t just limit action to 4141 Spring Valley Rd.,” she said. “You have to go out into the community, and you have to live the mission in a public way. I think the Holocaust and Human Rights Museum is sort of the perfect vehicle for us living our mission.”

Our vision statement part three is ‘we see the world made more hopeful because of the Greenhill community,’ and that’s exactly what the museum is trying to do.”

Greenhill hosts an annual yearend dinner to celebrate employee accomplishments. The dinner has been hosted at various cultural institutions across Dallas, including the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden and the Sixth Floor Museum.

This past year, the school’s Celebrating Teaching Dinner was held at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, which helped further spark the partnership.

“It’s important to take advantage of this special night to add a dimension of education that we’re always learning,” Perryman said.

Greenhill had to consider a variety of factors when deciding where to hold the dinner.

“It was really tricky hosting the celebratory dinner at the Holocaust Museum because this is a museum that is set up to commemorate awful stuff and so we were sort of worried about whether it works to have a celebration at a place that has this as its mission,” Perryman said. “And yet the mission is so closely aligned with our mission of seeing ourselves as change agents in the world that it just felt like the right thing to do.”

An important part of Greenhill’s partnership with the museum is the Funk Family Upstander Speaker Series, which featured Opal Lee’s story. As a partner of the museum, Greenhill receives information on details of upcoming events and promotes those events among the community.

“The museum brings in different incredibly courageous people who are trying to change the world, even at the risk of their own lives,” Perryman said. “One of them was Opal Lee.”

Bresie, a long-time reader of Lee’s, says that the courage and perseverance of this iconic activist has served countless people across the city and nation.

“She decided that she was going to walk from Fort Worth to Washington to campaign for Juneteenth,” Bresie said.

With a mission statement like that, you can’t just limit action to 4141 Spring Valley Rd. You have to go out into the community, and you have to live the mission in a public way. I think the Holocaust and Human Rights Museum is sort of the perfect vehicle for us living our mission.”

In addition to Lee being the face of the Juneteenth movement, she is also devoted to philanthropy.

“She has done so much work in Fort Worth communities with soup kitchens and feeding people but also with forming an African American Historical Society in Fort Worth and building up that, giving community pride to her neighborhoods,” Bresie said.

Students who attended her talk reflected on how hearing accounts from a primary source enhanced their learning experience.

“It’s a lot more impactful hearing the person who accomplished these things speak, instead of hearing their story in a class,” senior Leah Smith said.

Smith says that the diversity these speakers bring also enhances the History Department’s curriculum.

“The partnership means that more people, especially minorities, can put their voices out without being filtered

Additionally, Perryman is encouraging campus interaction with the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum by giving his students free tickets to the institution’s Upstander Series.

Senior Ellie Thomas-Dietrich says she is appreciative of Greenhill’s partnership because it is facilitating important lessons to younger students.

“It’s important for people to come talk to us because it is important to start learning about these issues from a young age,” Thomas-Dietrich said.

According to Bresie, this partnership becomes especially important at a time when conservatives in some states have sought to ban from classrooms or school libraries the popular Holocaust novel “Maus” because the critics contend it is too graphic for younger students.

“The purpose of teaching hard history is to, one, help people understand how bad things happen in order to prevent them from happening again and also to sort of lift up and affirm the struggles of people who have been historically oppressed,” Bresie said.

Perryman says he believes the school’s partnership with the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum will deepen in the years ahead.

“I’d love more of our classes to go down there and have the experience of [the museum] education department’s workshops,” Perryman said.

Bresie echoes this sentiment.

“I hope that we’re encouraging people to start attending these lectures and to start going more to the museum,” she said. “I know our seventh-grade classes visit the Holocaust Museum, the genocide class visits, and I’m actually trying to get my World War II class to visit.

Like teachers, students say they hope this partnership could advance Holocaust education throughout the History Department.

“I’m on their junior board, and I think being able to take classes to visit the museum would be really powerful,” senior Talia Dauer said. “I definitely think it’s important to integrate Holocaust education in our school and also I know the museum has a human rights aspect to it. I know we cover the Holocaust a little bit in some classes, but definitely not to the depth I think we should.”

The partnership means that more people, especially minorities, can put their voices out without being filtered or censored in any way, which I think is incredibly important.”

Perryman envisions more classes at Greenhill connecting to the museum on a more profound and comprehensive level.

“I think what the museum does is it offers us a way into different important issues, not all of them, but important issues,” Perryman said. “And once we go in and learn about an issue, I think we’re more likely to have our eyes open to the next issue.”